Netherlands: AI Simulates Real-life Situations

Creating (im)possible learning situations

Healthcare students acquire a wide range of practical experiences during their internships. That is what internships are for. However, the chance of encountering an emergency situation during an internship is low. Internships may create ‘incidents’ to enable students to learn from them, but some scenarios cannot be reproduced in real life without compromising safety regulations or ethical principles. Students cannot be confronted with aggressive patients merely to gain experience. Even if such a situation were to occur, students would most likely be kept at a distance. AI can help create complex but important situations that students are unlikely to encounter during their internships.

Simulating lab work in the Experience Lab

ROC van Amsterdam’s Experience Lab uses AI to create lifelike learning situations. Laboratory students are often limited in what they are allowed to do during an internship because of safety risks. In the Experience Lab, students learn to apply their theoretical knowledge in a so-called ‘experience loop’. In the laboratory environment, equipped as a fully operational laboratory, they conduct tests on a case – let’s say patient ‘Anisa’ – admitted to an Emergency Department with unexplained symptoms.

A team of three students analyses samples, reads results and makes decisions based on their findings. They can even communicate with an AI-powered ‘doctor’ to obtain additional information. Based on the students’ actions and decisions, AI shapes the outcomes to create a unique patient story. Each choice affects Anisa’s situation. Next, students enter the feedback room, where AI shows them how their choices have influenced Anisa’s patient story.

The Experience Lab’s combination of a real laboratory and AI-based experience loops allows students to gain an authentic understanding of what it is like to work in a laboratory during a lifelike emergency situation. They become aware of how each piece of information and every decision they make shapes the outcomes.

Practising in virtual situations

A further step is to combine Virtual Reality (VR) with AI to generate a sensory environment in which students can practise their skills. VR creates the virtual learning environment, while AI creates lifelike scenarios in which students’ choices directly affect the learning experience. Instead of a limited set of pre-programmed scenarios, students can encounter an infinite number of situations because the scenario reacts to every decision made by the student.

Effective communication is of utmost importance in healthcare, but students often struggle to apply conversational techniques in real situations, such as checking a patient’s medical history or disclosing a potentially upsetting diagnosis. Practising these techniques in class with other students differs greatly from interacting with real patients, but it is often not possible to apply them in a professional healthcare setting.

The combination of VR and AI is relatively new. In 2025, a promising project, ‘Talk2Care’, received a grant awarded to a teacher at HZ University of Applied Sciences to develop an AI-powered Virtual Reality (VR) application for healthcare students. The application will be developed at HZ University of Applied Sciences and, as the project unfolds, VET students will also take part.

The Talk2Care application offers a solution. In the VR/AI application, students practise interview techniques in a virtual environment. However, instead of engaging in pre-programmed conversations with virtual patients, the patients are AI-powered. This means that the virtual AI patient ‘listens’ to the student and reacts appropriately, resulting in lifelike conversations that vary depending on the student’s questions and responses, just as they would in a real professional setting.

Read more

• Experience Lab bridges education and practice
• Experience Lab at HID Amsterdam
• Talk2Care: AI and VR for healthcare